Tentacle-Free Anime: "The Garden of Words" (2013) Review

I want to ask you something: What's more important to you when experiencing anime, the art and animation, or the story and characters? Because how you answer will determine how you enjoy this review. I personally prefer both to be great, but even if you have bad art and animation, if you have kick-ass characters and story then all will easily be forgiven. Of course, that's the thing with creators, some of them just don't know how to balance the two once they get really good at one over the other. Especially if you're Makoto Shinkai...

Summary: Takao, who is training to become a shoemaker, skipped school and is sketching shoes in a Japanese-style garden. He meets a mysterious woman, Yukino, who is older than him. Then, without arranging the times, the two start to see each other again and again, but only on rainy days. They deepen their relationship and open up to each other. But the end of the rainy season soon approaches... [AnimeNewsNetwork.com]​​

Makoto Shinkai is one of those creators whom, in one fell swoop, took the fandom by storm when he released his film 5 CM Per Second. It boasted some of the most beautiful animation anime as a medium has seen in a very long time, if ever, which enthralled people. It tried to tell a love story while mouths gaped open at all the pretty, shiny things. Now I could tell you my thoughts on 5 CM, but we're not here to talk about that. Perhaps someday, though.

Since then though, Shinkai has been seen as a powerful animator in the industry, generally taking on animation duties, as well directing and scripting of his films. He's been called the next Miyazaki by many people, and many, many fans lay in wait for when his next film will be released. If anything, they know that what they're going to get is going to be a feast for the eyes.

Click to enlarge

For me, I think Shinkai is the kind of creator that people will love because they prefer animation and art over story and character. Now I haven't seen every Shinkai film, and in fact I have actually found I prefer his short stories over his feature length films, but the ones I have seen just don't follow through properly with the story they set up and mask their folly through the beautiful animation that they boast.

Such, sadly, is the case with The Garden of Words, one of Shinkai's more recent films. It's a 45 minute venture into a growing relationship between a 15 year old High School student and mysterious 27 year old woman whom he meets in a Japanese-style garden. Now, before we get into the story, I'm going to go ahead and just gush all over the animation for this film. Just getting the gushing right out of the way.

This movie is freaking beautiful straight from the get go. The way Shinkai and his team use rain to give off reflections and the feeling of a dreary day. It's really like you're there in Kanto with the characters and apparently a lot of the scenery in this film is taken straight from real locations in the Kanto region of Japan. The only part in the film where the animation gives us the biggest hint that it is fake, is during a scene where Yukino is on the phone with her ex-boyfriend and there is a close-up of her hand. In that moment the renders of her hand show quite clearly that this is really, really good CGI and not some really, really nice rotoscoping.

And while the rainy season takes up most of this movie and plays the most central part in the film, it's not the only season put on display here. We see both winter and summer, and both are equally as beautiful in their show casings. The characters look wonderfully rendered and the attention to detail in just the locations we visit is stunning on every level. Hopefully, the images seen throughout this review will give you a better understanding of what I'm trying to convey.

Rain never looked so good!

Now, onto the story. While The Garden of Words truly is a feast for the eyes- there's no denying that- what it lacks is a satisfying story that, by the end of it all, makes you go “that was definitely worth my time.” And again, I've noticed this in past Shinkai stories as well. He just doesn't know how to end anything and generally leaves the story open-ended as if for you to decide what will happen next for the characters.

To be fair, there are a lot of stories like that, and some of them are really great. There's just something about Shinkai's works that rub me the wrong way with the open-ended endings. Now, let me back up a bit and actually talk about the story itself.

There are two major players to this tale: Takao, the 15 year old High School student, and Yukino the mysterious 27 year old woman. I really like their slow building relationship, as something that begins as happenstance through their mutual whereabouts when they first met into a complicated love story between two people, whom in today's society just can't be together. No matter how badly either of them may want it. And from that perspective, Shinkai is super rock solid in his story.

Takao lives a complicated life of his own, with a mother who is always skipping out on his life to date men in their early 20s, to a brother who doesn't believe in his abilities to one day become a successful Cobbler. He also made this “deal” with someone that gave him permission to skip first period of class every day it rains, which means during the rainy season of Kanto he's basically racking up so many tardies that I genuinely don't understand how he hasn't gotten held back or gotten expelled, yet. Especially since throughout the film you see him getting picked on for it, or even getting in trouble with teachers over it.

I wanna know whom he made that deal with, because it most surely wasn't any of his school teachers.

This creates a crux for Takao's part in the story. Because of this unexplained “deal” with no apparent repercussions, it allows him to meet Yukino, whom is also skipping out on work, but for her own initially unexplained reasons. At first, they're just two strangers sitting adjacent to one another on a park bench, but as they continue to meet one another, a bond begins to grow.

I promised myself I wouldn't make a foot fetish joke here

​What was interesting to me is how close these two were able to allow each other to get – such as Yukino buying a book for Takao, and Takao making shoes for Yukino – while letting an entire year pass between their meetings and never once learning each other's names. It's only in the latter half of the film that such knowledge becomes known to one another. It's told in such a “real” way that it took me out of the story a bit because that just doesn't happen. You don't allow yourself to become that close with someone without learning their name. That's just... no.

But Yukino has the most complicated story of the two of them. Now, I'm not sure if I want to give away the “big reveal” of the problems she's dealing with, as they're kind of the crux of the final half of the story and the ending. She's accused of an act early on in her story, which juxtaposes really interestingly with her actual growing relationship with Takao. It's hard to discuss this film without wanting to give everything away.

However, I won't.

What I was most impressed by is when, towards the end, Takao confesses her feelings toward her. Because this is anime, it's really easy to see where the story goes from there, but what actually happens is a complete 180 to what I was expecting. Shinkai definitely knows how to approach delicate subjects in his stories, so I have to give him credit there. This is a tale of an older woman who is well of age and young man who is not.

The rainy season brings with it dreary memories

​Now, anime has this thing where the roles are generally flipped with the male being older and the girl younger and not of age, and generally the love story is equally as accepted by the characters and viewers alike because “age is just a number, and love is love no matter who it is.” But because the tale is told as if it were taking place in today's world, today's society, the way Shinkai approaches and balances their feelings for one another is quite powerful and a testament to how well he at the very least thought how he wants his characters to be.

The ending is similar to what I see in a lot of his other works. He sets up this personal, grandiose and yet grounded tale stringing us along for the romance. Building, and building always making you wonder “how will these two characters end their long journey together? Or maybe even apart?” Well, because I've built it up, I'm going to go ahead and spoil the ending for The Garden of Words. If you don't like spoilers with or without a warning (I hate having no warning), then I suggest skipping down to where the spoiler tag ends. Here goes:

[SPOILERS!!]

The Garden of Words has this subplot throughout its story of Takao attempting to make shoes for Yukino as a gift to her for her friendship and also to show his love. She shoots him down near the end when he confesses his love, which leads to this big, almost childish spat between the two that's egged on by Takao. He's not totally in the wrong for being angry with her, but how he approaches it really shows his age.

When she shoots him down, in that same scene she also reveals to him that she will be moving back to her hometown in order to start her life anew. Now, because their story is set in modern day, they have cell phones, email, snail mail, and probably some version of Skype that would allow them to stay in touch with one another. But since this is a Shinkai film, not only do they not stay in touch with one another at the end of the film, which is a perfectly acceptable thing, but Takao ends up having no way of giving her the shoes he made.

Now, you could see it as unhealthy for the two to stay in touch with one another, especially since they might continue having feelings for one another, which isn't healthy. And it might be wrong for her to accept his shoes, because it will remind her of this fleeting “crush” the two of them shared for a year. But, because of the impact they had on each other, I do see it as perfectly okay for them to remain friends who contact each other every so often, in whatever form that takes.

I also see it as perfectly acceptable for her take the damn shoes from him and even meet him somewhere in Tokyo, or let him come to her home town for a bit just to give her the shoes, or even let him mail them to her for God's sake. There are so many ways he can get the shoes to her after he put in so much hard work!

No, what we get instead is something of “symbolism”, but really stupid symbolism where, alone, he takes the shoes to the place they met in the garden during the winter time after he is finished making them and presumably leaves them there as a sort of tribute to the time they spent there together. Right there on the bench where they sat, out in the open where anyone can take them. Sure, we don't see him actually leaving them there, but this is quite literally the order of events for that sequence: he arrives, takes them out of his bag to look at them, places them on his bench, I think then we get a look at Yukino far off in her hometown, and then back to him – an aerial view of the location – as he's walking away from the garden.

As far as I can tell, he left them there for anyone to take, which is no sort of tribute to their time spent together in the garden. What would've made that scene infinitely better is something my girlfriend suggested: either have him sit down on the bench, take a look at the shoes, reminisce, and then put the shoes back in his bag, or show Yukino from far off in her town, pan the camera down her body until we see that she's wearing the shoes he made for her. Sort of like a non-linear reveal of him actually having given them to her. Either one would've worked and it's this lack of committing to the story he's telling and the plots he is building that makes Makoto Shinkai such a frustrating figure to me when it comes to his works in the anime industry.

[END SPOILERS!!]

But it's not all bad for Shinkai; before we watched The Garden of Words, we watched his short 7-minute story titled Someone's Gaze that originally aired before Garden in theaters during its premiere. I sort of wanted that similar experience of watching the two in the fashion they were originally meant to be seen. Earlier, I mentioned I feel Shinkai should really stick to short stories rather than telling full-blown adventures and there's really no better example of that statement than with Someone's Gaze.

In 7-minutes, Shinkai tells a heart-wrenching story of a young woman and her family. A family that has grown apart due to different circumstances in their own lives, while a mysterious figure narrates the truths they conceal from one another. Now, I really don't want to spoil anything about this short, because I almost cried at the end and, when I looked over at my girlfriend, there were tears clearly streaming down her face.​

Someone's Gaze is a beautiful short story

This is the Shinkai I enjoy, the kind I saw in his short She and Her Cat - which, is getting a full anime series based around it (and I have no idea how they will even begin to achieve that) and is once again revisited here. The story is tight, focused, and it has an ending. A clear cut, decisive ending that tells you the journey you just witnessed was worth it.​If you don't want to watch a 45-minute film, at least watch this 7-minute short. You'll thank me for it later.

Do I think Makoto Shinkai is the next Miyazaki or is even on the same level as Miyazaki when it comes to being a storyteller and animator? He is a beautiful animator, I'll give him that, but as a storyteller he's definitely not the next Miyazaki. He has the potential to be, for damn sure, but he has to learn how to end something first. When he starts getting better at that, he may just reach that point. For now though, it's hard for me to call myself a Shinkai fan like everyone else in the community.

The Garden of Words was great up until its ending, and boasted stunning animation, but because of that ending I only see people I recommend this movie to walking away more frustrated than anything. So I really can't recommend it, sadly. Was it a good movie? Ehh, it was alright, in the grand scheme of things. It heavily frustrates me, but I also don't absolutely hate it. I love Someone's Gaze, so I definitely recommend you go watch that. You can buy this movie legally here in the states, it's licensed by Sentai Filmworks. However, the short doesn't seem to have an official license. It could have been added nicely as an extra on Garden's U.S. Release, but alas. It is, however, viewable in full on YouTube.

Final Score: 3 Confessions of Love out of 5And that's because Someone's Gaze was as good as it was.

Have you checked out "The Garden of Words"? Did the animation impress you, or did the story hold it back? Let us know below!